Sunday, June 16, 2013

Mojang's Scrolls Strategy Guide, Killer Decks, Tips and Tricks

Scrolls ($20.00) is Mojang's second game after the "little-known" Minecraft. It is a collectible card/scroll game that liberally borrows mechanics from other well known and established CCG games like Magic the Gathering while incorporating hex based movement and a novel way for managing resources.

Scrolls Strategy

The board is broken-up into three regions: two outer staging wings on
either side consisting of a single lane of hexes each and a central area
that should see most of the aggressive plays from either player. Your
ultimate goal is to control the center-most lane of hexes:

The concepts at work her are simple enough - when your units become
active, with a few exceptions, they can attack the lane they are in, the
lane above their position of the lane below their position. The middle 3
lanes therefore provide the most options for attack, while the middle
lane is the one most exposed to attack by units in aggressive positions.
If you can eliminate the enemy's idol in the middle lane before they
can eliminate yours, you can then concentrate on attacking / defending
areas that your opponent has fewer active options in while being down an
idol.

You can contest the center obviously by playing units into it, or by
dropping units into the outer wings - where they cannot be attacked by
centrally placed units - as a feint maneuver, or by dropping artillery
units into the lanes just above or just below the center where they can
control central space while your opponent cannot directly threaten them
with units sitting right in moneyville.

If I'm the first player to drop a unit onto the field, I almost always
drop it right on the money. If it's an aggressive unit like a Kinfolk
Brave, it gives me the initiative & allows me to threaten the 3 most
active lanes; if it's a passive unit like this memorial, I'm set to
protect anything I want to drop in the center.

The wings of the board are where you want to go if you feel like the
center has been lost to you; they aren't active spaces, but are
difficult to mount effective attacks against because they're effectively bottle-necked (there's only one lane with access to either wing). It is a
much, much better idea to concede middle ground for a while and just
play units into these safe areas if you feel that you've lost out in
tempo / aggression to your opponent - attacking ineffectually into a
superior position will just guarantee a loss most of the time.

Remember to take advantage of your units’ mobility: pull them out of harm’s way, move them in to strike, or block an opponent’s attack with shrewd planning.

Sacrifice for resources early on, then move towards a mix of resources and scrolls later.

If you’re down to your last scroll, it’s almost always worth sacrificing it for two more.

The more lean your deck is, the more control you have over your forces. There’s a minimum of 50 scrolls per deck. You probably don’t want to include more than that.

Stick to single resource decks when starting. It’s easier to learn basic strategy that way.

Make sure your deck has good resource balance. You want some scrolls to play early-on as well as some hard-hitting finishers for the late game.

Scrolls can be common, uncommon, or rare. You can tell the rarity of a scroll by its border, and weathered edges.

You can spend your hard-earned gold on new scrolls. You can also sell any you don’t need back to the store at a reduced price. You’ll probably get a better deal by trading with other humans though. Check out the Trading room and make some friends!

Watch out for the cheeky notifications in the top right corner. Click them to join games.

Press “Ctrl” to show stats (Attack, Countdown and Health) for all units and idols on the board.

Press Enter to chat with your opponent during a game.

You can join any room by typing its name into the “join or create custom room box.” You can also create your own rooms for friends/enemies this way.

Where do destroyed/sacrificed cards go?
When your draw deck runs out, destroyed/sacrificed cards are shuffled to
create a new draw pile. There is no visual indication, but it has been
confirmed that it works this way.

Should I buy 10 random/ 1 random/ 1 faction-specific scroll(s)?
Disclaimer, this is somewhat subjective and should probably include multiple bullets

Math in this comment
indicates if you buy 10-randoms and sell everything that's not from
your faction, you come out slightly ahead. However it's also noted that
keeping out-of-faction rares eliminates this economic advantage.

If you're new and don't want to spend time trading, in-faction
scrolls can help you build of sets of 3 for the commons and uncommons
you want in your deck.

What is the attack order?
Front column top row to bottom, middle column top to bottom, back column top to bottom.

How many scrolls should I have in my deck?
Generally for any deck-building game the recommendation is to have the
minimum number of cards required in your deck (50 in the case of
Scrolls) to make your deck behave as consistently as possible. For this
same reason, you should generally have the maximum number allowed of
each scroll in your deck (3 in the case of Scrolls). Of course these are
both guidelines and may vary with your individual deck.How do i tell the rarity of a scroll?
There are 3 types of rarity: common, uncommon and rare. When you buy
random scrolls 70% will be common, 20% will be uncommon and 10% will be
rare. Rare scrolls are darker and more torn around the edge, uncommon a
little less dark and torn and common even less dark and torn.